Re: e4rat - reduce boot time (into X) by some 50% for ext4

Okay, so I went a little over board with autologin KDE, FF4, Thunderbird, Skype, Kopete, Yakuake, Dropbox and wicd but all that took 2 mins 46 seconds as per normal and just under 90 seconds with e4rat.

My startup.log has no less than 3471 files in it and the machine I am using is a Thinkpad T61 with an Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU T7500 @ 2.20GHz CPU with 2GB RAM.

Just under 50% reduction in start-up time is fine with me although the above is really something for a desktop, not a laptop.

Bootchart does not seem to do the job as it stops at kdm, but it is too late for me to look into it now.

Re: e4rat - reduce boot time (into X) by some 50% for ext4

Pardon me if it's a noob question, but why/is this only for ext4?

Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.What profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under the sun?All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again.For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.

Re: e4rat - reduce boot time (into X) by some 50% for ext4

hauzer wrote:

Pardon me if it's a noob question, but why/is this only for ext4?

From the first post:

e4rat reduces disk access times through physical file reallocation. It is based
on the online defragmentation ioctl EXT4_IOC_MOVE_EXT from the ext4 filesystem,
which was introduced in Linux Kernel 2.6.31. Therefore, other filesystem types
or earlier versions of extended filesystems are not supported.

Re: e4rat - reduce boot time (into X) by some 50% for ext4

The binaries should be in /sbin, not in /usr/sbin some people (like me) may have /usr in a different partition not mounted at startup. Similarly, If the .so are needed for the collect and preload binary they should be in /lib instead of /usr/lib.

PS : maybe devtmpfs will make this work mmm time to test.edit : silly me, there is no way the FS will be mounted before fsck .... devtmpfs just populate the /dev directory before udev is up

Last edited by ChoK (2011-04-06 00:22:17)

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Re: e4rat - reduce boot time (into X) by some 50% for ext4

Tested this on my old mediacenter (pentium4 3.0ghz HT, 40gb ide 7200rpm, 1gb ddr) with xbmc... from grub to console, there was no improvement (8.4 seconds), but from console to xbmc, the diference is huge! X and xbmc start in +/- 2 seconds, before I had to wait at least 15 seconds! This sure works with me, thank you!(I had 660 files on startup.log, minimal install + xbmc)

When I upgrade my kernel and do some other major changes, do I have to re-run e4rat-collect and alloc manually?It would be nice to see this program to be used to improve most used programs startup time, just by reallocating the files in correct order (just like some disk optimizers/defrag do on windows).

Re: e4rat - reduce boot time (into X) by some 50% for ext4

I wonder, systemd requires an init line and so does e4rat... how would I use both?

Allan-Volunteer on the (topic being discussed) mailn lists. You never get the people who matters attention on the forums.jasonwryan-Installing Arch is a measure of your literacy. Maintaining Arch is a measure of your diligence. Contributing to Arch is a measure of your competence.Griemak-Bleeding edge, not bleeding flat. Edge denotes falls will occur from time to time. Bring your own parachute.

Re: e4rat - reduce boot time (into X) by some 50% for ext4

falconindy wrote:

From the first post:

e4rat reduces disk access times through physical file reallocation. It is based
on the online defragmentation ioctl EXT4_IOC_MOVE_EXT from the ext4 filesystem,
which was introduced in Linux Kernel 2.6.31. Therefore, other filesystem types
or earlier versions of extended filesystems are not supported.

Thanks for that, my eyes are kinda heavy right now. If I would 'convert' ext3 to ext4 could it be possible for this to work?

Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.What profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under the sun?All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again.For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.

Re: e4rat - reduce boot time (into X) by some 50% for ext4

Thanks for that, my eyes are kinda heavy right now. If I would 'convert' ext3 to ext4 could it be possible for this to work?

Yes, if you really convert your ext3 to ext4, and not just mount is as ext4.

I'd like to hear from others how this conversion goes. My last non-ext4 partition is pretty important (all my data/work) and I don't really feel like restoring backups for a couple of hours.

Allan-Volunteer on the (topic being discussed) mailn lists. You never get the people who matters attention on the forums.jasonwryan-Installing Arch is a measure of your literacy. Maintaining Arch is a measure of your diligence. Contributing to Arch is a measure of your competence.Griemak-Bleeding edge, not bleeding flat. Edge denotes falls will occur from time to time. Bring your own parachute.

Re: e4rat - reduce boot time (into X) by some 50% for ext4

There's no shortage of information available on converting ext3 to ext4 just by enabling the extra features via tune2fs. However, it doesn't, for example, magically convert all your written data to use extents. I'm dubious that you'd get any immediate mileage out of e4rat by performing such a conversion.

Re: e4rat - reduce boot time (into X) by some 50% for ext4

Re: e4rat - reduce boot time (into X) by some 50% for ext4

falconindy wrote:

There's no shortage of information available on converting ext3 to ext4 just by enabling the extra features via tune2fs. However, it doesn't, for example, magically convert all your written data to use extents. I'm dubious that you'd get any immediate mileage out of e4rat by performing such a conversion.

That's what I thought. It wouldn't 'really' be an ext4 system that way, just an ext3 system which can do a few of the things ext4 can, is that right?

Allan-Volunteer on the (topic being discussed) mailn lists. You never get the people who matters attention on the forums.jasonwryan-Installing Arch is a measure of your literacy. Maintaining Arch is a measure of your diligence. Contributing to Arch is a measure of your competence.Griemak-Bleeding edge, not bleeding flat. Edge denotes falls will occur from time to time. Bring your own parachute.

Re: e4rat - reduce boot time (into X) by some 50% for ext4

Yes, I f*cked up my system testing this. The 'conversion' goes fine, but e4rat still can't move the files and they somehow get corrupted. Now I have corrupt libc.so and whatnot.. Oh well.

Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.What profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under the sun?All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again.For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.

Re: e4rat - reduce boot time (into X) by some 50% for ext4

I just tried your package, it works flawlessly for me. Thank you very much!System startup feels a little bit faster, but KDE seems to start a lot quicker. I haven't analyzed any bootcharts yet, might do so later.

By the way, if you use runlevels to start your DM and just append the e4rat init stuff to the grub line: If your DM doesn't start any more, put the runlevel to the end of the line. (At least I had to put the '5' to the end, or the system would boot to runlevel 3...)

Re: e4rat - reduce boot time (into X) by some 50% for ext4

ext4 only?

Prediction...This year will be a very odd year!Hard work does not kill people but why risk it: Charlie MccarthyA man is not complete until he is married..then..he is finished.When ALL is lost, what can be found? Even bytes get lonely for a little bit! X-ray confirms Iam spineless!

Re: e4rat - reduce boot time (into X) by some 50% for ext4

x86_64 compatible?

Prediction...This year will be a very odd year!Hard work does not kill people but why risk it: Charlie MccarthyA man is not complete until he is married..then..he is finished.When ALL is lost, what can be found? Even bytes get lonely for a little bit! X-ray confirms Iam spineless!